Friday, November 7, 2014

Viral Social Media

This post is mostly me just being amazed by social media and how it works. We can analyze it all day long and talk about why things happen and what purpose they serve. However, like anything else, sometimes things happen that we can't explain. One recent example is the ongoing craze about "Alex, from target".  The article I read from Yahoo detailed an interview with the girl that took the picture.
Another article explained some of the numbers of his fame, such as followers, tweets, etc.
The article stated,  "Now "Alex from target" has 664,000 followers, fallout from the simple fact that, while at his job bagging groceries at a Target store in Texas, a girl took his picture and said he was cute. Other girls agreed, the picture went viral, and now Alex has been featured on the websites of CNN and The Washington Post. Ellen DeGeneres tweeted at him and (I'm pretty sure he was on the show too.) Five million people have read the BuzzFeed post about him.

All of this happened simply because one girl thought he was cute and wanted to know his name. So her friend took a picture of him with his name tag on.


2 comments:

  1. I remember hearing about this story online on various news sites. Also, you are correct he was on Ellen's show last week.

    It is mind boggling how something so simple like this explodes all across the country via online communication or social media. This just shows how integrated and connected we all are despite our different interests.

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  2. Social media can be used for great things or for really stupid reasons. This is an example of social media can have a big effect on something dumb. This shows us though how powerful social media really is and that there can come a lot of good from using social media.

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